


the move

by orphan_account



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Flash Fic, M/M, exhaustion challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-13
Updated: 2008-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>200 miles is a really long way. Jesus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the move

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the sga_flashfic "Exhaustion" challenge.

  


"It's a long way. I mean, it's a really fucking long way."

"Well, it can't be that far, we were right on top of it in the jumper, weren't we?"

"It's 200 miles."

"200 MILES?! You want us to walk 200 miles?"

John shrugged. "It's easy country. We're better off moving than just hanging out here and hoping to be rescued. We've got no radio, no power, no way of knowing how long it'll be before we're picked up, assuming we are picked up. But this is easy ground and I can cover..., " he stopped and eyed Rodney appraisingly. "Okay, we can cover, say, 30 miles a day, at least, and that'll have us at the gate inside a week." Rodney began to speak but... "It's better to go with the known in an unknown territory, " John said, reflexively, like it was a proverb. What you don't know will hurt you.

"I'm still very much with the "staying here and hoping we get picked up before the locals spot us" plan, " Rodney said, firmly settling his feet against the super-futuro dash.

"I dunno," John said slowly. "Those Daenraes were really pissed at me. I don't think I wanna be around when they catch up to us."

"How can they catch up to us if we're not around, genius?"

John grinned. "Exactly," he said breezily. "Come on, let's see what we can scavenge out the jumper."

In the late morning they stopped to rest. The path wound round a stream and in its crook a small grassy area was spread like a blanket. John set up high up on the slope and Rodney sprawled below him, tossing shrapnel into the current. A large flock of small birds swooped and wheeled crazily above them. Like sparks. Like woodchips flying off a lathe. They tore into foil packets that fizzed and boiled and then smelled of the mess hall. They ate steadily. The sun, clouded all morning, suddenly threw off its wrappings and flooded the world with colour.

It was not a bad world, all things considered.

By midday they'd gotten to grips with the thorny issues of the day. It had been definitively established that John was barely the intellectual equal of the lesser spotted catshark and that Rodney was an insufferable whiner. After a very long, very boring argument about some guy named Naismith, it was further decided that John knew where they were headed and that Rodney could, in fact, keep his mouth shut. If he tried.

"Tell me a story then."

John's forehead crinkled and he slung a look sideways at Rodney.

"Come on," Rodney said. "I told you one."

"I thought you didn't like other people talking," John said without malice, and watched Rodney puff up, about to strike, before he cut in. "Okay! One day, I met a genius called Rodney McKay, and I saved his life a whole bunch of times and he never, ever thanked me, not once because as well as being a genius he was the most objectionable man alive. But that was okay, apparently, because this one time he saved the galaxy and that gives a person a certain leeway."

Rodney snorted. "I question your narrative structure."

"Well, I question your stupid face," John said, stuck the ground with a twig, and stalked off up the hill with his compass.

They made camp on the edge of a wood that stretched up one slope of a hill that seemed to be suffering from male-pattern baldness. Hill-pattern baldness. John pitched the tent and Rodney collapsed into it, groaning and massaging his trembling limbs.

"I'm too tired," Rodney said after a while. "I can't sleep. I've gone all the way through tired and out the other side."

John said, "I'll tell you a story that's not about you; that'll send you straight off."

But Rodney was quiet, so after a minute John began. "I got shot once, in the john."

"...In the john," Rodney repeated suspiciously. "Is this the beginning of a joke? Is that some kind of military euphemism that I don?t know because I?m not--?"

"In the can," John said, unperturbed. "In a port-a-potty in Basra."

(It was the beginning of a joke, as it turned out. But, see, John is still waiting for the punchline.)

The next night John said, "I think we'd better dig out a Dakota pit," and he scanned the horizon for the millionth time.

"There is no one here, Major. I have this, this cool Ancients' Gameboy with these cool Ancients' dots on it and going by this cool game of Ancients' Pong that's going on there's nobody here but us and the trees and oh my God there's something flying over us." Rodney dived on the floor at John's feet and his jaw bounced off the dirt. The fly-like buzzy thing flew off, buzzing.

John laughed for about a day after that.

On the third evening, just as it had gone dark, the wind picked up. A gust whirled around their camp. The tent tumbled and danced across the moor.

"It looks like a plastic bag," John observed.

That night they slept with their backs to each other on the hard open ground in a hollow. It was the very end of summer and the long baked earth was crumbly and dry. John gripped a gun. Rodney slept braced for impact, his head cradled, his legs twitching and thrumming like plucked strings.

It was, unexpectedly, a good place to be.

When the sun came up, it came slowly. The countryside was a rough dirt smear along the horizon. John thought it was kind of beautiful, in a drab kind of way.

"I'm going to die, " Rodney announced.

John rolled his eyes. "You are not. Get a sense of proportion, will you?"

"I have a PhD in astrophysics, Boys Brigade. If it's one thing I am amply blessed with, it is a sense of fucking proportion. Now, if you don't give me that coffee I am going to actually die right here on this godforsaken hilltop just to prove you wrong."

John looked down at his mug. He'd found the sachet stuck down the back of one of the backpacks. Fuck knew how McKay had missed it. He looked up at Rodney, whose thinning hair was haloed wispily by the sunrise, and very deliberately downed the lot.

Rodney kind of exploded. And that was day four.

The rustling trees and the river, wider now and running quickly, dulled their senses with white noise. Black rocks stood jagged on the horizon. Sheppard sighted the far tor and turned westwards to the failing sun. "Come on, " he said. "We gotta set up camp again."

What happened next was hard to quantify. An animal darted across their path. Some kind of dog-like thing with short fur that lay close and sleek against its flank. Rodney reared, startled, and John snapped an arm out rigidly across the other man's chest. A dog, a jump of surprise, a steadying hand.

John's spine was suddenly foreign and cold. He held his breath. The two of them stood, frozen, for a minute or more. Rodney squeezed John's arm, a tiny, firm pressure that was gone in an instant. Then they went on together in silence.

By the sixth day Rodney no longer walked, he stumbled. His face was slack and grey. The exhaustion hung heavy on him; his arms bobbed and dangled uselessly. His expressive hands were limp, subdued. His mouth worked fine though.

"How are you not tired? I know you GI Joe types are all get up and go but how are you not tired at all? Look at you. Your tail is positively bushy." Rodney glared at him. "And I'm struggling to even acknowledge this fact, so deeply does it disturb and frighten me, but we haven't had any coffee or coffee-flavoured caffeinated beverages for getting on for 72 hours now, so I'm positive it's not chemically induced."

John looked at him. "I'm in the Air Force, Rodney," he said, incredulous. "And, hey." A flashing grin streaked across his muddied face. "Keep your eyes off my tail."

Rodney rolled his eyes and then, despite himself, grinned back, a wide smile spreading like the sun rising.

And this, John thought, this right here, was the genesis.

(On the seventh day, they rested.)


End file.
